Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Otis and Child

Joseph H. Davis

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Between 1832 and 1838 Davis traveled in western Maine and eastern New Hampshire painting family portraits. Little is known of his life, but a majority of scholars believe that he may have been the "Pine Hill Joe" Davis of Newfield, Maine, who executed more than 160 watercolor portraits or family records. In the present work, an elaborately penned inscription reveals that the man at left is Daniel Otis, aged forty-six; the woman is Betsy Otis, aged forty; and the child is Polly Otis, aged seven months. The most obvious individualizing touch in the portrait is Daniel Otis's newspaper, the Great-Falls Journal, which was issued between 1832 and 1836 in Great Falls, a mill town in southeastern New Hampshire, about twenty miles northeast of Portsmouth.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art